Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Now I Know My ABCs: Tot School Alphabet Activities from The Kid's Co-Op + What We Did with the Letter D at Tot School

I decided to highlight toddler and preschool letter learning ideas and alphabet activities from The Kid's Co-Op this week, since I was a bit behind in posting my Tot School Letter D post. (I wanted to post in on Tuesday, but we still had activities to do today). I'm merging my Tot School update with our Letter of the Week Activities for D with my selections from The Kid's Co-Op. Hope you enjoy!

They especially liked this because they love David Shannon's Duck On A Bike and love playing in the bathtub with their ducks. So, we did some duck hunts around the house with our ducks, some duck hunts in the bathtub (adding some milk caps with the letter D to bathtub playtime) and measured, counted and labeled our ducks, while also reading many of our favorite duck books. We also love going to the duck pond to see the ducks as well.

Hear - We moved onto things we hear that start with the letter D and dogs immediately came to mind since our neighbor has two dogs, and Caterpillar notices every little bark. Again, I put together a simple basket with two fun dog books, including the classic Go, Dog, Go! by P.D. Eastman.

I took the small dog beads that you see in the basket (in the small orange bowl) and created another activity for the boys that helps with their grip, color sorting and, for Wild Thing, word recognition. I found the chopsticks with chopstick holders at the dollar store.

They both really enjoyed this activity.

For sound, I also set up a simple drum basket inspired by the Letter D page from ABC Kids by Simon Basher in which Dexter's dog dances dreadfully (in the photo Dexter also plays the drums). The boys took turns playing the drum and making the dog dance and daddy did some dancing and drumming too -- that's lots of letter Ds!

Taste - For taste, we did dates and donuts. The dates I featured through Lara Bars with some deconstructed Lara Bars as well -- a plate for them that had a bar and then the bar ingredients all separate: dates, peanuts, chocolate chips. Of course, the big hit, though, were the donuts. Caterpillar and Wild Thing shared a donut from a bakery. Then we attempted to make baked butternut squash donuts at home. They tasted fabulous, but didn't look all that great. (There's a couple of photos on my Facebook page). Our real donut making inspired some Playdough Donut Play, which was a major hit.

Wild Thing played for over an hour with this set up, and Caterpillar lasted 30 minutes

before he started throwing the playdough around -- that's a really long time for him.

Finally, Touch and Smell - My touch and smell items went together: dirt and daisies. There's more daisy photos and other photos from Letter D Week over on Facebook.

We also realized we could create the letter with our daisies. Plus, we painted with them too